EU accuses Google of search results bias

The EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has formally charged American tech giant Google with abusing its dominance in web searches, to the disadvantage of competitors. 

An official probe into Google’s Android smartphone software, which the Commission said forces phone manufacturers to favour the company’s proprietary services and applications, was also announced.

“[Google] artificially favours its own shopping [service] and this constitutes an abuse,” said Vestager, the EU Commissioner for Competition, announcing the conclusion of a nearly five-year investigation. “Google’s products are systematically displayed at the top of the result, irrespective of [their] relevance to the query.”

“Dominance itself is not a problem,” she added. “However, dominant companies have a responsibility not to abuse their market position.”

In addition to investigating potential bias in Google searches, the Commission is also collecting evidence on whether the tech giant scrapes content from rival websites and gets into agreements with advertisers that may exclude rival search-advertising services. 

The decision to go after the world’s most-used search engine is the biggest competition case in Europe since the European Commission brought charges against Microsoft in the last decade. Back then, EU regulators levied nearly €2 billion in fines.

Google has been given ten weeks to respond. The case is not automatically destined for the courtrooms, although this appears likely. Vestager said she is open to Google's response, which could lead to a settlement of some kind, and would listen to the company’s case before deciding how to proceed. 

Search bias

The accusation is that searches on Goggle favour Google’s commercial interests, with users directed to products or services owned by the company. For example, looking for a particular song might lead the user first to the music platform Youtube, owned by Google. The Commission said it traces the beginning of this behaviour back to 2008. 

Similarly, the charge against Google’s Android system, is that it promotes Google services. 

The growth of internet commerce means that fair exposure online is crucial, said the Commissioner. “If you cannot be found, you can’t do business,” she said. 

The Google defence 

Google made its initial reply in an official blog post entitled ‘The Search for Harm’ which says, “While Google may be the most-used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide of the mark.” 

The company then presents data showing how it trailed behind online shopping sites in France, Germany and the UK for clicks. 

The company is likely to tell Commission officials it competes fairly with rival online search engines like Bing and Yahoo, and rival shopping sites, the most prominent being Amazon. 

Speaking in Brussels earlier this year, David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice President, argued that while Google has more than 90 per cent of the market for web searches in Europe (in America it’s 68 per cent), it is “trivially easy to use another search engine.” 

Smartphone apps, which make it easier to bypass Google’s services, are chipping away at the company’s dominance too, he added. 

Defending the charge of bias

In its announcement today, the Commission was at pains to pre-empt a charge of bias in shaking down a large non-European company. Earlier this year the US President, Barack Obama, fired a shot across the bows when he warned Europe against making “commercially driven” decisions to penalise companies like Google and Facebook.

It is not just European companies that have grievances, said Vestager: one out of four complainants that has approached the European Commission over Google is a US company, including Microsoft and Expedia. 

The EU has also received antitrust allegations from Tripadvisor and Streetmap. News Corp, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is the most recent company to lodge a complaint.